The Texas A&M Health Science Center Rural and Community Health Institute's Nursing Quality and Safety Collaborative propose an innovative conference to bring together experts in the fields of error causation, error taxonomy, and error reduction to increase patient safety and quality of care in small and rural healthcare facilities. The conference will enable nurses to explore and discuss the challenges of and solutions for performing accurate error and practice breakdown analysis in a small and rural hospital setting. The proposed conference will open a dialogue which will help promote the improvement of quality and patient safety in underserved small and rural communities. Through education and discussion, the goal of the conference is to expand opportunities for nurses to lead and manage collaborative efforts with physicians and other members of the healthcare team to conduct research and to redesign and improve practice environments and health care systems. The proposed conference is innovative because the methodologies discussed will enhance a nurse's ability to accurately evaluate and reduce hospital errors using proven taxonomy and root cause analysis methods. With the proper education and training, nurses can work together with other professionals, as knowledgeable full partners, to increase patient safety and the quality of care through redesign and improvement of practice environments and health care delivery systems. These improvements will ultimately benefit the hospitals, providers, and the patients of small and rural health care facilities. The proposed date for this conference is fall 2011. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This educational program is extremely relevant to public health. The program addresses issues identified in the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) report Quality through Collaboration: the Future of Rural Health Care by educating rural healthcare providers to build a stronger quality improvement support structure. Public health will be positively impact as we expand opportunities to nurses to lead and manage collaborative efforts among healthcare teams to conduct research and to redesign and improve practice environments and health systems. The information gleaned from this educational activity will be shared through publications, conference proceedings documentation and disseminated through our rural health network.